HISTORY OF PASCO COUNTY

Land O’ Lakes

The historic marker reads as follows:

The name Land O’ Lakes now applies to an area which earlier consisted of numerous small towns.

Hernando County school board records from 1877-78 show that a school existed at Pleasant Plains. The school may have been in existence earlier; school records before that time were lost in a fire. In 1879 a post office was established at Pleasant Plains, although it operated only briefly.

In 1883 a post office was established at Diston, although it was originally in Hillsborough County. It was renamed Drexel in 1888.

In 1893 a post office was established at Myrtle. A school existed at Myrtle by 1895.

In 1898 a post office was established at Shingleton.

According to MacManus, Drexel had a Baptist church, Church of God, railroad station and agent, and water tower, but no cemetery. The Drexel Missionary Baptist Church was founded in the fall of 1929 by Rev. E. D. Vining and Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Douglas. The church met in the Drexel schoolhouse. In March 1931 it moved to the YMCA hall on State Road 5. The property on which the current First Baptist Church of Land O’ Lakes stands was purchased in October 1931. On April 3, 1932 the mission was organized into a church and chose the name Drexel Missionary Baptist of Ehren Florida. In 1949 the church changed its name to Land O’ Lakes Baptist Church. Then in October 1959 the current name of First Baptist Church of Land O’ Lakes was chosen. (Information from the web site of First Baptist Church of Land O’ Lakes.)

The first site of the Drexel Church of God was on U. S. 41 just north of the old overpass. Material from an old Ehren school building was used to construct the church, which later became a TV repair shop. Rev. Willie R. Sanders organized the congregation. Established in 1938, it is the predecessor to the Land O’ Lakes Church of God.

According to MacManus, “When the one-room school at Myrtle got too crowded, a decision was made to build a larger, two-room structure to be named Myrtle-Denham School. Mike Riegler, a school district trustee at the time, donated five acres for the school. While the Myrtle-Denham school was being built, the younger students attended school in the Lake View United Brethren Church building while the older ones continued studying at the Myrtle School. Myrtle-Denham School, built in 1934, was located on S. R. 54 just east of U. S. 41. It functioned until 1948 when its students were transferred to the newly opened Sanders Memorial School in Land O’ Lakes. The old school became a residence, then was torn down in 1997.”

During World War II a tourist attraction known as Dupree Gardens was in operation.

Sanders Memorial Elementary School opened in 1948. It was built to replace smaller, wooden schools at Myrtle, Denham, Tucker, and Drexel.

In 1949 the name Land O’ Lakes came into existence. A discussion of the origin (and spelling) of the name Land O’ Lakes is here.

Land O’ Lakes High School opened on July 3, 1975. Also in the summer of 1975 the Pasco County school system opened new offices on U. S. 41 in Land O’ Lakes, near the geographic center of the county. Until that time, administrators had worked in several locations in Dade City, Zephyrhills, and New Port Richey.

Land O’ Lakes experienced rapid population growth beginning in the 1990s.

Central Pasco Full Of Historic Sites

The following article appeared in the Tampa Tribune on April 18, 2003.

By CAROL JEFFARES HEDMAN

LAND O’ LAKES - Even before Florida achieved statehood in 1845, settlers ventured into the wilderness of the eastern part of what later became Pasco County.

Next, Pasco’s coast beckoned newcomers.

Central Pasco was slower to be settled. But plenty of folks now know about the area’s virtues, and it has become the fastest growing part of Pasco.

The influx of subdivisions is crowding out historic sites that dotted the once isolated countryside. But plenty of history is left, with several sites listed in the Pasco County Historical Preservation Committee’s book The Historic Places of Pasco County. An Internet site even suggests traversing the “Land O’ Lakes Historical Trail.”

The preservation committee and the Pasco County Commission in 1981 dedicated a marker commemorating Land O’ Lakes' history. Placed at the Land O’ Lakes Community Center on U.S. 41 North, the marker relates how settlement of the area began in the 1850s after the establishment of a stagecoach relay station between Brooksville and Tampa.

The land had opened up to settlement soon after the Seminoles who once roamed the forest were forced by an 1830 U.S. government order to leave for reservations west of the Mississippi River.

By the late 1840s, a Hernando County businessman operated the Concord Stage Line, cutting through the center of what is now Pasco County. Relay stops were established where fresh teams could replace exhausted horses.

One station was located at what was called 26-Mile House. Before long, a few log cabins were built around the relay station and a small community developed.

A Community Called Ehren

The stage line stopped running about 1856. But with vast stands of timber, sawmills dotted the countryside. One of those was Ehren Pine Sawmill, established near the 26-Mile House by Fredrick and Louis Muller of Germany along what is now County Road 583.

Ehren Pine Sawmill employed about 100 workers and had homes for some to live in. Others owned property near the mill in the community that became known as Ehren.

Another historical marker is in Ehren Cemetery, located off County Road 583, called Ehren Cutoff. The marker explains that “Ehren” means “place of honor” in the Mullers’ native German. [However, according to MacManus, Frederick Ernest Müller named Ehren for his hometown in Germany.]

A post office opened in Ehren on Jan. 17, 1890. It burned and was rebuilt several times before closing in 1950. At one time it was listed in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” as the smallest post office in the country.

Ehren Cemetery, with graves dating to the early 1900s, includes several homemade tombstones. Impressions of leaves are made in the concrete, with names scribbled into cement. Osteen, McDaniels and Jones are early family names found in the cemetery.

By 1910, Ehren boasted a hotel and school, along with the sawmill.

With the sawmills that dotted central Pasco came a need for a railroad to transport the lumber to market.

In 1907, Tampa Southern Railroad put down tracks along the old stagecoach route. A station was built at what is now U.S. 41 and State Road 54. It was called Denham Station, named after the train’s fireman [actually named for the general manager of the Tampa Northern Railroad--jm].

Several other small communities developed along the railroad line, including Drexel.

Drexel originally was named Diston, a misspelling of Hamilton Disston, the Philadelphia entrepreneur who rescued the state when it was on the verge of bankruptcy by buying 4 million acres. Edmund Dunne, who brokered the land deal, founded the Catholic Colony of San Antonio in east Pasco.

A post office was opened at Diston in 1883. It was renamed Drexel in 1888 and closed for good in 1902.

Drexel was located west of today’s U.S. 41 at Drexel and Lake Thomas roads.

Butter And Lots Of Lakes

The entire area was known as Denham-Drexel until Sept. 1, 1950, when it was officially changed to Land O’ Lakes.

The usual story has it a contest was held to select the name. Three people suggested Land O’ Lakes, appropriate for an area with 50 lakes within 18 square miles.

Two of those proposing that name were a tourist from Michigan and a woman named Sis Hahs Kerns, who wrote community news stories and distributed copies herself. The Hahs family had moved to the area from Fredericktown, Mo., in 1914.

Also suggesting the name was real estate agent M.H. Sears, who brought butter with the popular Land O’ Lakes brand to the meeting.

Sears' real estate office at 5110 Land O’ Lakes Blvd., now home to Land O’ Lakes Realty, is listed on the historical trail compiled by Steve Rajtar of the Florida Trail Association. His Land O’ Lakes trail is on the Web site www.reocities.com/krdvry/florida.html Other structures listed as historic include the Clark House, 21538 Hopson Road. The residence dates to about 1919. Its windows are noteworthy for their novel design, according to The Historic Places of Pasco County.

William J. and Maude Clark came to Land O’ Lakes in 1933 and paid $10 a month for the property. It’s now owned by their daughter Emma Lou Clark Harvey.

The Hale house, 21846 Vagts Lane, was the large estate home of Arthur B. Hale. He was appointed chairman of the state road board in 1937 by Gov. Fred Cone.

Born in 1888 in Tennessee, Hale moved in 1907 to Tampa, where he was a mechanical engineer. He also worked in refrigeration with the Tampa Ice Co. and later owned Hale and Buerke Electric Co.

During World War II, Hale headed the War Production Board in Tampa. He died in 1942 at 54.

Hale Road, off U.S. 41, is named for him. The house is now owned by the estate of August Vagts.

The Riegler house, at 2506 Collier Parkway, is obscured from public view but still stands as tribute to George “Mike” Riegler, who established the first citrus nursery and grove in what is now Land O’ Lakes.

Riegler, a native of Germany, came to Florida and was the first permanent settler of the new town developed by North Tampa Land Co. and originally called North Tampa, now Lutz, settling there in 1911.

He soon moved to Pasco County, near 20-Mile Level Road, and established the citrus nursery and grove. His nursery provided trees he had budded to stock raised from the seed of rough lemon. The budwood came from eight trees he purchased from Glen St. Mary Nurseries, one of the oldest in Florida, established in 1882 near Jacksonville.

The house is now owned by Riegler’s granddaughter, Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida and an author. Included in her publications is the 560-page “Citrus, Sawmills, Critters & Crackers” that she and her mother, Elizabeth Riegler MacManus, wrote on life in early Lutz and central Pasco.

Sanders Memorial School, 5126 School Road, was built with a $50,000 bond to replace the two-room Drexel School. The old school became the lunchroom and the “new” facility was finished in time for the 1948 academic year.

The school was the vision of Judge James Wilton Sanders, who served as principal of Zephyrhills High School before his tenure as superintendent of schools from 1912-20.

A third historical marker was placed in the Land O’ Lakes area last year at the site of Dupree Gardens.

The 1940s tourist attraction originally was intended as a place for Tampa lawyer William Dupree to hunt and relax.

Located east of what was then State Road 5, now U.S. 41, and Ehren Cutoff, Dupree built a log cabin and spent his days planting an exotic garden of flowers, fruit trees and palms.

The result was so beautiful that Dupree’s friends persuaded him to open the 25 acres to the public on Dec. 1, 1940.

The gardens eventually closed, and Dupree sold the property in the early 1950s, with some of the land developed as home sites and a parcel that included Dupree Lake opened as a nudist camp. Some 400 acres were citrus groves. The lodge was converted into a private residence.

Last year, a Tampa company announced plans to build 1,100 homes, plus some commercial space, on 471 acres that included Dupree Gardens.